I managed to block the ticket from my mind. My mental gymnastics didn’t help. I still lived in the reality that yes, that ticket really did happen and you need to change how you drive. Fortunately, treatments for this brain thing have helped dramatically. I no longer feel compelled to treat every short drive to the grocery store as though I’m careening across the Sahara in the Paris / Dakar rally.
I didn’t want to drive like that. There was however the question of the angry squirrels living in my chest. They wanted me to go faster. I had to get rid of them. With ADHD treatments, the angry squirrels became subdued.
Though I had changed, my relationship with the DMV had not. With the ticket blocked from my mind. I changed myself in relationship to the world. I became a better driver. With the same sense of ‘will over reality’ I attempted to ostrich the impact of the ticket away.
This was not successful. Try as I may, merely willing a ticket away. Though fairly sharp, I guess willful ignorance did not wipe clean my driving record. No did ignoring my mail - especially the letters sent by the DMV.
Six months later, an envelope arrived, this time registered mail addressed to me. The result? Licensee suspended. Failure to comply with mandatory road safety course.
Shit.
That was a gift from my past that I really didn’t want.
And it’s great.
That sunny day, when the pants fit and the plates of armor began to burn off like a morning fog, I was driven by a pack of the gnarliest squirrels I’d ever met. I wasn’t just racing from Paris to Dakar. I was winning.
These days?
The Paris Dakar Rally no longer happens. I’m less often deluded into thinking that I’m ‘winning’. And my driving?
Well, I make a lot fewer people a lot less anxious. I’ve learned that I have an urgent motor driving me. The stimulants help to slow me down enough. They slow me down enough to choose to ease off the gas and take my time.
On the whole, it’s been great. I’m more at ease with myself. I understand that living with a neurological disorder is something bigger than me. I have a sense of ‘my nature’ and a connection to nature.
Out in nature, the squirrels are happier, less bound and less plentiful thanks to the many crows who stalk their shrill chirpings with cunning and reason.
The rule of three dictates that the first time something happens, it merely happens. When it repeats itself? When it happens twice? That establishes a pattern. One: Introduce a thing - riff, idea, number of syllables, anything really. Two: Repeat it. Three. do something close to and almost like but also completely different from the established pattern.
First squirely impulsivity had me driving way too fast. The second squirrely impulsivity helped me block out reality and focus on becoming the new me. The change that makes this a joke, or the part of the story that makes this ‘the changed element’? Now I’m proceeding methodically, directly and head on. I paid the ticket, took the demeaning course and had my license reinstated.
And the course? The fifty five drive to survive - a road refresher for ‘experienced’ drivers.
I guess that means that I’m old?
Either way, enjoy the sun. Beware of those times when Tom Petty croons: You’re so bad. The po po’s could be anywhere.
And if the ADHD pants fit, wear them and if they’re perfect, never take them off.
If you’re chest is filled with squirrels, they belong in nature. Your nature, if you embrace enough of it, might give them more room to play.
Get outside! It’s healing
Go play.
And if you have a foot that’s weighted down by ADHD?
Don’t get mad at the po-po’s.
They’re only doing their job.